The CEO, Kabaka Foundation received the an Award in Phoenix, Arizona, America on behalf of the Kabaka for the Best Blood Donation Drive Partner of the year 2021.
The Kabaka Foundation was deserving of recognition because of the enormous contribution towards blood donor mobilization and blood collection. The foundation has supported the blood service to collect the highest number of blood units in five days – 18,818 units which is one of the greatest achievement in the country.
The initial drives were conducted for 2 days twice a year in 2018 – Jan 2020 where 7,000 units of blood were collected.
The county blood donation drives dubbed as the Massaza blood donation drive have been conducted in 5 counties each conducted for five days, so far they have 64,746 units in 25 days scattered between September – December 2021 and February 2022. With the least collections in one county being 8,945 units in five days and the highest being 18,818 units in five days.
Since the Foundation started the mobilization drives for the first time in the history of blood banking Uganda had a consistent supply of blood with no stock out in the months of September – December 2021.
For a longtime in Uganda up to 70% of the blood donations were contributed by students and only 30% was contributed by the out of school adult blood donors. With the Kabaka Foundation initiative Uganda Red Cross Society expounded on its community blood donation initiative and registered a paradigm shift of blood donations of up to 90% from the community adult blood donors. This was attained at such a time when there was a lock down during the COVID19 Pandemic in the country with no student donors and the blood service was struggling to reach out to the un usual donor population and all this was possible because of the engagement of the Kabaka Foundation in the blood donation campaigns.
The Massaza blood donation drive initiative Uganda Red Cross Society has registered up to 44,000 new blood donors, these donated for the first time as a result of the Buganda Kingdom appeal to donate blood. Uganda Red Cross Society has enrolled these new blood donors on the donor panel and will ensure that they are motivated to regularly donate blood.
The Massaza blood donation drive is a sustainable donor recruitment strategy which continue running for the next two years rotating throughout the 18 counties of the Buganda Kingdom. The beauty is that the people in the kingdom pay allegiance to the King ‘Kabaka’ of Buganda and are donating blood voluntarily and passionately to save life.
The donation drives have been graced by religious leaders that have appealed to their congregation to follow suit. For each of the five days during the donation drives in each of the county a religious leader was selected to convey the kings messages the people encouraging them to donate blood. They represented all the religions in Uganda. This strategy has helped to appeal to every believer in their respective religion to donate blood.
